Bill Pulver and ARU need to nurture club rugby to strengthen the Wallabies

There was a bunch of blokes who – for no good reason anyone could work out – loved nothing more than running into other blokes, who in turn loved running into them. Someone threw an inflated bit of pigskin in the middle of them, put a scoreboard at one end, and the game of rugby was born. The players were a weird mob, but, no one minded much because, as Oscar Wilde said, whatever else, rugby was "a good occasion for keeping thirty bullies far from the centre of the city".

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As it happened, the grassroots clubs flourished to such an extent all over the world that around the turn of the 1900s a flourishing international competition grew up, and for those members of grassroots clubs, there was no greater honour imaginable than rising from the muddy turf of your own club, and representing your country, and your club, by playing 15 bullies from another part of the world. And the Wallabies in turn, would frequently play for their country one day, and their clubs the next day. For the grassroots clubs, and the national teams had the same ethos – it was all about the game, and the camaraderie, and the touring, and the fun. The grassroots clubs and their supporters were as proud of their national players, as the national players were as proud of the clubs whence they sprang.

And then, around the turn of last century, in Australia particularly, it started to get complicated. For while the grassroots clubs continued with much the same ethos as ever, living off the smell of an oily rag, those representing the national teams realised they could make MILLIONS of dollars ... and that is where the trouble started.

For the disconnect between the grassroots and the national team became so great that, well ... it became so great, that just yesterday, the most influential president of a grassroots club in the country, Brett Papworth, launched a withering attack on the ARU, and its CEO, Bill Pulver, in an article he penned for Rugby News.

I encourage you to read the piece, but here are the central charges.

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The ARU is filled with highly paid executives who do three-fifths of bugger-all for the game, with an average three of them getting a total of say $700k a year between them, while a club like Eastwood spends $430k to $500k in a whole season, to put 130 players on the field. The whole of Australian Rugby has a salary bill of $20 million, and "they basically manage one team, the Wallabies".

"The ARU board is made up of big-end-of-town corporate high flyers, who are on the board for the benefit of their own CVs, and who in my opinion couldn't give a hoot about how many kids play the game in 2035."

They spend money on such things, as "Louis Vuitton overnight bags for the partners of Wallabies staff, post World Cup".

While the ARU expenditure last year was $106 million, "the game at grassroots level was handed $4 million. [There is] no weighting towards NSW or Queensland, who essentially receive the same as Victoria and WA. yet do most of the development work by definition of their size.

"When the salary bill at head office is 500 per cent of the total investment in the game's grassroots, it is time for them to hand the game back to people who have a clue."

There was more, much more, but it boiled down to this primal scream from the grassroots.

Bill Pulver, in response?

I think it fair to say, it was not his best day in the job. I have encouraged him to write a full response for the Herald. But, in the meantime, he gave considered responses and outright denials to much of it, including the Vuitton bags, and most particularly the charge that there is an even division of revenue between the states – he says NSW got 36 per cent last year and Queensland 29 per cent. He regrets saying that the clubs would only piss money up against the wall, but his central point was that when Australian Rugby has given money to clubs, their historical experience has been to see it squandered on player payments. He robustly defended the ARU board as "loyal servants of the game," and took particular issue with Papworth's "disrespectful" comments.

His particular point was that money given to community rugby has now gone up to about $10 million, and that now rugby has weathered the worst of its financial hard times, it can afford to give more.

Where do I fall, generally?

I know them both to be good men, with a great passion for the game - just as I know the men and women on the board - and think Pappy really was way too strong on them. Both Pulver and Papworth have done great jobs for their constituencies.

But when it's all done, I am with Papworth that the professional game is insufficiently respectful to the grassroots game that has nurtured it, sustained it, and turned it into the powerhouse it is. I have long said the best-administered game in the country is the AFL because instead of putting all their resources in the pointy end of the pyramid, they have concentrated on growing the base – at which point the pointy end gets higher by itself. I think rugby is moving towards that, but should try to move faster, and steer by one star alone: "How do we get as many bums into muddy shorts as we possibly can?" A successful Wallabies side is a hell of a start for that. But a flourishing grassroots is the end game.

Bottom line? Papworth and Pulver need to talk into the night. And the ARU Board has to give a lot more money to development, to making the grassroots grow.